Pause, Reflect and Go Inwards

Photo by quentin 

We live in a world that is obsessed with answers and action. We have a problem and immediately search for an answer, implement a solution, or ‘do’ something to address the issue. Our natural tendency is to find solutions to the challenges we face or the crisis we find ourselves in or we get busy with something else so we can ignore it for a while. Whilst understandable, this single-minded focus on ‘doing’ is interfering with our ‘being’ and is often getting us further away from our truth as we continue to drown out the inner voice within. 

This action orientated approach of distraction or immediate problem solving doesn’t always work, mainly because we launch ourselves into solution mode before we’ve even figured out the true extent of the problem. We make assumptions and jump to conclusions about what things mean without enquiry to establish the truth of the situation. To help prevent this outcome I’ve established a habit of first asking, “Do I know the problem I am trying to solve?”

 Too often, we forget the wise words of Albert Einstein who suggested that, “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it." In other words, we can’t find accurate and useful long-term solutions by thinking the way we’ve always thought. What I’ve observed is that once we raise our consciousness, we gain access to better, smarter, more sophisticated, and coherent answers. And, that is only possible through a process of self-discovery facilitated by taking time out to pause, reflect and go inwards. 

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. 

-Viktor Frankl

When we give ourselves space to really think about the situation and reflect on the challenge, we unleash the possibilities for growth and freedom that Frankl talks about. Before the Second World War, Frankl was a respected Jewish neurologist and psychiatrist. In 1942, he was deported to the Nazi Theresienstadt Ghetto along with his wife, parents and brother, later they were moved to the Auschwitz concentration camp. His wife and brother died in the camp, his mother was killed in the gas chambers. Apart from Frankl himself the only other member of his family to survive the Holocaust was his sister who emigrated to Australia. Faced with the unimaginable horror of losing his family, he knew that despite not being able to do anything about his external circumstances he could still control his internal responses and find meaning when none seemed possible. 

Miraculously, Frankl was able to find that meaning amongst despair. He found a way to reframe his situation so that he could view it more constructively and study human nature. By going inward, he was then able to bring that awareness back to the world to help millions of people cope more constructively with their own despair through his classic little book - Man’s Search for Meaning. The biggest take away for me from that book was that it doesn’t matter what happens to us, what matters is what we make those events and situations mean. The second take away was that if we can really pause, reflect and go inward to uncover why we exist and what our purpose is everything else in our life starts to make more sense – even the really challenging stuff. 

 Creating that space between stimulus and response to really pause and reflect on our situation safeguards us from leaping to wrong solutions and jumping to unhelpful conclusions. It allows us to reframe our current reality so that a new understanding can gradually emerge. 

We may live in a result orientated world, where ‘being busy’ is a prerequisite for public recognition and sometimes even validation around our sense of self, but busy will not drown out the nudge forever. Drowning out the nudge temporarily often results in more obvious consequences such as health scares, career disappointments and relationship break downs that force us to pay attention to the inner nudge. 

Guidance Comes in Many Forms

When the bank I was working for established a strategic relationship with the online share trading company, E*Trade, I was the bank nominated director on the E*Trade Board. During that time, CEO, Kerry Roxburgh and I got to know each other quite well. My job was to facilitate rapid growth while stopping the parent company from meddling too much in E*Trade so it remained a nimble internet business. At one of the board meetings, during a tea break, Kerry asked me how everything was going with my broader life and I answered honestly, “I’m not sure.” I explained my confusion about what I was doing and where I was heading and not being sure that the path I seemed to be on was the path I should be on! 

He is a very astute guy and he listened. A few hours later, as we broke for lunch Kerry disappeared, arriving back a little late for the afternoon session. At the end of the day he came over to me and handed me a package in a brown paper bag. Turned out, the reason he’d been late back after lunch was that he’d went to all the local bookshops looking for a specific book for me but couldn’t find it so had gone home to collect his own copy. 

 The book was the Paradox of Success by John R O’Neil. He explained that it was the book that helped him leave his previous role. He recognised the feeling of confusion I’d described to him as something he had felt himself and the book had been a huge influence on him to make some changes and learn how to stop and smell the roses. 

 I started reading it on the flight home that evening and devoured it over the coming days. It felt as though the author was speaking directly to me. I was experiencing the words of Buddha “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear” and this was not going to be the first time. I have found that whilst books in themselves are not the answer , they have often served as excellent sign posts pointing at ‘stuff’ I feel encouraged to explore.

The book was explaining how so many leaders in the corporate world experience the paradox of success, where the costs of their victories outweigh the rewards.

 “When I meet people who have a great triumph,
I tell them that I hope it doesn’t hurt too much. “
- C.G.Jung

 I remember feeling a wave of relief to know that what I was feeling was not unusual. And more importantly there was a way out. 

 Another book that came my way, around the same time was a book called Hope for the Flowers by Trina Paulus. Created in 1972 to look like a children’s picture book it’s actually a metaphor for life and our search for meaning. In the story, a caterpillar called Stripe hatches from his egg and busily munches through the leaf he was born on. He continues to munch on nearby leaf’s and grows bigger and bigger. But a gnawing sensation starts to bother him – surely there must be more to life than munching leaves. He has a strong sense that he should be in the sky but can’t figure out how that is possible. Eventually he comes across a pillar of caterpillars reaching up into the sky. Of course, he assumes that this is the best and perhaps only way to get into the sky so he starts climbing the pillar. No one is looking at each other, everyone is just climbing and scrambling over one another to get to the top. Exhausted and a little demoralized Stripe stops for a moment and meets Yellow. She too is a bit confused about why everyone is climbing over each other to get somewhere, even though no one is actually that sure where that somewhere is or if it’s worth the effort. Yellow also feels bad about climbing over other caterpillars just so they can reach the top. The two of them decide to stop climbing and go back down the pillar. They live together quite happily for a while but then Stripe becomes convinced that he’s missing out. He leaves a heart-broken Yellow and re-joins the pillar. He is fully committed now, he makes no eye contact and just presses forward, climbing over as many caterpillars as he can and fast as he can. He gets to the top but he doesn’t feel elated. Instead he feels disillusioned. Perhaps he should have just stayed with Yellow. Was this it? All that work for this? He realised that he hadn’t really got into the sky at all he was just at the top of the pillar and there were plenty caterpillars coming up to take his place. 

 Meanwhile, Yellow, had payed attention to her inner nudge, she ate and then climbed up a tree and spun herself into a cocoon. Eventually she emerges from the cocoon transformed into a butterfly and flies into the sky effortlessly. She has found the real answer to the feeling that there must be more to life than eating leaves, and who caterpillars really are. She flies up to Stripe and encourages him to come down the pillar and be who he really is. At first, he doesn’t believe that the beautiful butterfly is Yellow but she manages to convince him and he comes down the pillar. Other caterpillars ask him why he’s coming down and what’s up there. He tells them the truth but they don’t believe him and keep climbing. Yellow shows Stripe her empty cocoon, and he realizes what he needs to do. He makes a cocoon of his own and when he emerges as a butterfly they fly off into the sky together. 

 I remember reading this and totally identifying with Stripe. The constantly climbing up the pillar, otherwise known as the corporate ladder. I wasn’t at the top of the pillar but I was getting closer and all I felt was “Is this it?” I wanted to get off the pillar but couldn’t figure out what I’d tell the other caterpillars. The book has sold millions of copies all over the world so there must be millions of caterpillars out their figuring out how to be butterflies and I was certainly one of them!

After reading both these books it was very clear to me that I needed to find a way off the pillar, even for a while so I could pause, reflect and discover what type of butterfly I wanted to be. 

“But how can the caterpillar be aware that he can become a butterfly? The only way is to commune with butterflies, to see butterflies moving in the wind, in the sun. Seeing them soaring high, seeing them moving from one flower to another flower, seeing their beauty, their color, maybe a deep desire, a longing arises in the caterpillar: “Can I also be the same?” In that very moment the caterpillar has started awakening, a process has been triggered.

The Master/disciple relationship is the relationship between a caterpillar and a butterfly, a friendship between a caterpillar and a butterfly. the butterfly cannot prove that the caterpillar can become a butterfly; there is no logical way. But the butterfly can provoke a longing in the caterpillar — that it is possible.”

-Osho

Copyright © Satyendra Chevendra
Pause, Reflect and Go Inwards

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